The City of Dauphin had small surpluses in both their General Fund and Utility Fund.

The General Fund had a surplus of $367,457.

Scott Carr says it’s even smaller when you consider that nearly half was due to project delays. A few examples he gave included a telephone system didn’t get replaced until January 2019 and some work at the Watson Art Centre is getting done in early 2019. 

There were other variances in the fund that helped the General Fund.

“We had greater than expected new construction which increased our tax base. We had some insurance rebates that were greater than expected, and a few other costs such as Dauphin Rec Services and Economic Development were under budget just due to various reasons.”

 There were some items that were over budget this year.

“The fire department had an extremely high number of calls this year which resulted in them being 42 thousand dollars over budget. We also spent more on roads and streets than budgeted. Our yard waste cleanup, specifically the spring and fall clean up, were higher than budgeted. We had an early snowfall which took down a lot of branches and the volumes for the fall clean up were very high.”

Dauphin had a relatively small Utility Fund surplus of $256,151. Project delays also helped this fund.

“We had a grinder at Lift Station One that was installed in January 2019 due to a contractor delay.”  Carr says their electronic monitoring system was delayed and is being installed this spring. “Plus we’re looking at doing a pressure management design system which was delayed that resulted in about half of the 256 thousand  dollar surplus.”

There were also a few items that offset the surplus.  “We had higher than usual water main breaks. Specifically in the fall, late fall of 2018. There were a lot of water main breaks. That generally doesn’t happen at that time of year. That meant that we were spending more on main water repairs than what was budgeted.”

The surpluses for 2018 are being transferred into reserves and used to finish off projects that were not completed last year. 

The city’s reserve fund is sitting at just over 8 million 668 thousand dollars.  Carr considers it to be above average.

You can read the 2018 Financial Analysis presented to coucnil by clicking the link. 6.b)iii) 2018 Financial Analysis (2).pdf.